around seven metres long and I was lucky to find them that day and to spend half a day swimming with them; it was amazing.
©Laurent Ballesta L
aurent Ballesta is many things. He is an award winning underwater photographer, a record breaker and
discoverer of multiple new marine species, and a committed biologist to boot. Such a successful career spent underwater, documenting the treasures the deep sea has to offer, must surely have been kick started by something inspiring. And for Ballesta, the ambition to push the limits of what one man and his camera can do beneath the sea began in the most incredible of circumstances.
“I have this very strong memory from when I was out 16 or 17, just here where I live in the South of France in Montpellier,” the 43-year-old explains.“One day, we were so lucky to find a school of basking sharks, huge, huge sharks which are very rare in the Mediterranean Sea. They can be
“I went back home with such an incredible story to tell and it seemed that people didn’t believe me anymore. That was the time when I realised I would have to take photographs to prove that these adventures I was going on were indeed true. I wanted to make sure I was able to take proof of what I had seen with my own eyes.” Ballesta admits this isn’t uncommon for divers or, indeed, anyone who takes risks in visiting inhospitable, far reaches of the world, be that a polar expedition, a trip into deep rainforest or, in his case, a subterranean world of wonder. “Photography becomes essential, for me it is more important than bringing back physical evidence, not that I ever would.
“It has happened many times over the years where people doubt what you see, but with a camera I can quickly show them these incredible sights, and we can all share and learn more about this mystical world.”
Ballesta’s desire for photographic proof of his incredible dives has since morphed into a career as one of the world’s most renowned marine researchers. But while his work has been recognised by everyone from National Geographic to the French government, this close encounter with basking sharks just off his home coast in the south of France has underpinned much of the explorer’s need to document
the exotic life that can be found so close to our own world.
“Sometimes if you start with a difficult proposition in a very faraway place, people can become confused – it’s too great a leap,” he says. “So I have often restricted myself to the familiar, yet difficult, challenges of the Mediterranean Sea… the French Riviera, the Cote D’Azur. “Everybody dives here, so people can relate to it. But in my case, I was going to dive deeper and longer, to show another world, things people will never have seen before, because no-one has ever recorded proof of it!
“I remember the great pleasure I took when I did this same dive over several summers between 2006 and 2008, during which time I made it to a depth of 200m. This was very deep photography, and the first exhibition of this work was shown in la Promenade des Anglais, in Nice. All my photographs were put along the promenade and I remember watching people, who were looking at my work… I remember the pleasure I took when I saw those people admiring those photographs, then turning their heads and looking into the very same sea from where these works of art were created, albeit so hidden and so far down.
“I imagined what they were thinking about when they realised that. They were hopefully thinking that the strange creature on the photograph must be very close to them, living in the water below, and they would have been right!”
©Laurent Ballesta
ONBOARD | SPRING 2018 | 57
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